Yara Abbas – In her own words

Sharmine Narwani – MideastShuffle

I met Al Ikhbariya journalist Yara Abbas for the first and only time in August 2012. I was organizing my trip into Aleppo and was looking to talk to someone on the ground about safety issues. An acquaintance of Yara’s who worked at my hotel told me he knew a journalist on the front lines of the conflict in Aleppo, and gave me her number. When Yara and I finally spoke, she was on her way back to Damascus and warned me down the phone line about the road between Aleppo and its airport, at the time subject to random checkpoints set up by armed rebels.

The connection wasn’t great. “Look – I reach Damascus tonight. Why don’t we meet tomorrow and talk in person,” she kindly suggested via mobile.

The following day I headed to her temporary offices off Ummayad Square. In June, Al Ikhbariya’s headquarters had been bombed by Jabhat al-Nusra, gutting the building and killing seven members of staff, including three journalists. The new facilities where I met Yara had also been recently bombed, but on a much smaller scale — I think only one studio was destroyed.

Yara had rushed back to Damascus from nine straight days embedded with Syrian troops in Aleppo to await news about her roommate and fellow Al Ikhbariya colleague Yara Saleh — recently kidnapped by rebels along with three other crew members, one of whom, Hatem Abu Yehia, was later executed.

Our conversation was interrupted by phone calls from friends and colleagues calling to commiserate over Saleh’s kidnapping. Yara was clearly shaken by the news and teared up several times during these calls.

She was a striking young woman in her mid 20s — slender, tall, huge green eyes framed by long dark hair. Most notable though were her immaculately manicured long fingernails. A solitary girlish vanity on the front lines of combat, I smiled to myself.

I rarely have reason to interview members of the media. My only two exceptions have both been related to the Syrian conflict — the first, Paul Conroy, the freelance Sunday Times cameraman injured in Homs whom I interviewed outside his London hospital — and now Yara.

Although I went to meet Yara for tips on how to avoid the dangers of Aleppo, I ended up taking some notes because she was providing accounts and impressions of events that, at the time, were still novel.

I wish I had taken more notes — at some point fairly early on, I just stopped writing and focused on listening to her stories. Some of the things I recall from our conversation that I didn’t commit to paper are details about army tactics. The soldiers she had just left behind in Aleppo, for instance, moved in small groups from house to house, and street to street. I had looked into this subject in June during a trip to learn more about the army’s recent escalation of military operations in hotspots around the country after the UN mission had failed to establish a ceasefire.

Contrary to what is reported widely in the media, until — and even after — the Syrian military introduced their air force into the conflict, ground troops continuously and systematically waged small-scale operations in neighborhoods occupied by opposition militias. This usually starts with gathering intelligence on where rebels store their weapons, who they are, where they live — getting the lay of the land, so to speak — and then moves on to small ground operations to target and destroy these networks.

Yara’s account of her nine days embedded with the army in Aleppo confirmed this for me, but she surprised me with the information that the soldiers she travelled with mostly slept in the conflict zone itself — in a vacant home or sometimes on the street. Having wrested back territory, they were unwilling to leave it for the night.  When I asked her if she was afraid, Yara was emphatic that she has never been afraid of moving in sniper-filled corridors. She told me that the soldiers — whom she had first met in Damascus and then followed into Aleppo — protected her with their lives and made her feel safe.

When I heard of Yara’s death this week — at the hands of a sniper, no less — my first thought, oddly, was this: The Syrian army soldiers who she admired so much were not there to protect her as her car raced out of war-torn Qusayr.

Here is Yara last August, in her own words:

On the scene in Aleppo:  At the beginning there were still civilians in these areas (in Aleppo’s contested neighborhoods), now maybe 20 percent remain.

I went with the army and knocked at the door of one woman. She started to cry — please take me out of here. They removed her and took her to her brother’s home. The militias make holes in the walls of homes to go from building to building to avoid being out in the open. Seventy percent of the destruction there is from militias. I saw 12 big bombs and 35 small ones in a home they had taken over.

You see the same militia patterns in Homs as in Aleppo — there are no tactical differences. Their plan is to gain weapons, kill Syrian soldiers, hit government buildings.

On the militias: I saw three from Lebanon, one from Africa, from Libya. All of the ones whose passports we found in their hideout had travelled to Saudi Arabia, Cyprus and Turkey — there are stamps in their passports. Some of their weapons are coming on the Lebanon-Syria border via donkeys.

They send out women and kids to see where the soldiers are, what they are doing. I saw a woman with a stroller myself — soldiers asked me to go talk to her. She had guns in her pram that she was delivering to militias.

They sent an old man past one checkpoint saying he wants to go check on his home — he had a bomb on him and they detonated it.

FSA has very developed weapons, and they have all kinds of weapons. Bombs, Doshkas (heavy machine guns) and Shilkas (radar-guided anti-aircraft systems), anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft weapons. An anti-aircraft weapon was just used in Idlib.

I’ve become so much more determined and strong after my time in Aleppo. They put a mask of religion on their face — they are not fighting for true issues. Their demands for freedom are false. Look at what they are doing to civilians. They say they want to stop the violence, but they’re committing the violence.

If they were true, they would not have a weapon. They would be unable to kill the Syrian people. There are a lot of Islamists who are also rejecting these militias because they know they are not fighting for Syrian progress. Yes, there are people who are helping them, but also a lot of Islamists who are refusing this way. I saw this myself in the middle of Salaheddine (a heavily contested Aleppo neighborhood). They (pious Syrians) stayed home and prayed, but wouldn’t open the door to the militias. They were scared.

This varies in areas. In Hajjar al-Aswad (Damascus suburb) about 80 percent are pro-militia. About 90 percent in Aleppo are with the government now.

On the Syrian army: You see our soldiers when they are attacked, sometimes when they are dead. You cannot be separated from this. These soldiers know they’re going to be killed. They stand in the middle of the street and shoot — they are not afraid. They have a mission.

A soldier from Talbiseh (near Homs) has seven gunshots in his body from Duma and he’s come back to fight.

From Rastan, Deraa, Idlib — all of them don’t want to leave — they want to stay and fight.

One soldier, a Sunni from Idlib, had a gunshot in his leg — he refused to leave the army. He went to the hospital and came back the next day to fight in Aleppo. In Idlib militias put pressure on his family to make him leave the army — they took his brother for a while, beat him up a bit. But the soldier said “they can take my whole family, but not my country.” I did a story on him.

The group of soldiers I’m with in Aleppo I met in Damascus. Before that they were in Homs and Deraa. They are so young yet they’re so strong.

Yara is listed as the 38th media casualty of the Syrian conflict — by any standard that is a shocking number of journalists to have lost their lives covering a story. It appears that reporters in Syria are increasingly being singled out for execution. Whichever perspective a journalist brings to this highly contested media war over Syria, death is surely undeserved.

Rest in peace, Yara Abbas.

May all of you rest in peace:

Abdul Raheem Kour Hassan, Watan FM
Unknown, in Damascus, Syria

Ghaith Abd al-Jawad, Qaboun Media Center
March 10, 2013, in Damascus, Syria

Amr Badir al-Deen Junaid, Qaboun Media Center
March 10, 2013, in Damascus, Syria

Walid Jamil Amira, Jobar Media Center
March 3, 2013, in Damascus, Syria

Mohamed al-Mesalma, Al-Jazeera
January 18, 2013, in Daraa, Syria

Yves Debay, Assault
January 17, 2013, in Aleppo, Syria

Suhail Mahmoud al-Ali, Dunya TV
January 4, 2013, in Damascus, Syria

Naji Asaad, Tishreen
December 4, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Mohamed Quratem, Enab Baladi
November 28, 2012, in Darya, Syria

Mohamed al-Khal, Freelance
November 25, 2012, in Deir al-Zour, Syria

Basel Tawfiq Youssef, Syrian State TV
November 21, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Hozan Abdel Halim Mahmoud, Freelance
November 19, 2012, in Ras al-Ain, Syria

Mohammed al-Ashram, Al-Ikhbariya
October 10, 2012, in Deir Al-Zour, Syria

Mona al-Bakkour, Al-Thawra and Syria al-Qalaa
October 3, 2012, in Aleppo, Syria

Maya Naser, Press TV
September 26, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Abdel Karim al-Oqda, Shaam News Network
September 19, 2012, in Hama, Syria

Yusuf Ahmed Deeb, Liwaa Al-Fatih
September 16, 2012, in Aleppo, Syria

Tamer al-Awam, Freelance
September 9, 2012, in Aleppo, Syria

Mosaab al-Obdaallah, Tishreen
August 22, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Mika Yamamoto, Japan Press
August 20, 2012, in Aleppo, Syria

Ali Abbas, SANA
August 11, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Hatem Abu Yehia, Al-Ikhbariya
August 10, 2012, in Al-Tal, Syria

Mohammad Shamma, Al-Ikhbariya
June 27, 2012, in Doursha, Syria

Sami Abu Amin, Al-Ikhbariya
June 27, 2012, in Doursha, Syria

Ahmed al-Assam, Freelance
May 28, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Bassel al-Shahade, Freelance
May 28, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Ahmed Adnan al-Ashlaq, Shaam News Network
May 27, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Lawrence Fahmy al-Naimi, Shaam News Network
May 27, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Ammar Mohamed Suhail Zado, Shaam News Network
May 27, 2012, in Damascus, Syria

Anas al-Tarsha, Freelance
February 24, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Rémi Ochlik, Freelance
February 22, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Marie Colvin, The Sunday Times
February 22, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Rami al-Sayed, Freelance
February 21, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Mazhar Tayyara, Freelance
February 4, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Gilles Jacquier, France 2
January 11, 2012, in Homs, Syria

Basil al-Sayed, Freelance
December 27, 2011, in Homs, Syria

Ferzat Jarban, Freelance
November 19 or 20, 2011, in Al-Qasir, Syria

The third best thing to do

Another rainy day where I cannot do anything in the garden. I wanted to find a new home for a couple of catmint (nepeta) plants that I bought to please my cat family, transplant chard and tomato seedlings, peg down the new runners of the strawberries into little pots, remove weeds, plug sage and lemon balm leaves for drying, and check the fruit trees and strawberry plants to remove leaves that are infected with fungi.

All this important work has to wait, so the second best thing to do would be playing piano, guitar, or percussion. Yet for one or the other reason I feel a bit weary and lethargic today, maybe it’s the weather or some hormonal imbalance or the iron deficiency caused by my vegetarian diet.

Short of going to bed again and sleeping the whole day, I resort to the third best thing to do, which is turning on the computer, checking the emails, and reading other peoples blog posts, comments, discourses, essays, studies, and analysis.

I greatly enjoy well formulated political, social, economical, philosophical, and scientific essays. I thoroughly examine comments, compositions, dissertations, and analysis despite the fact that I seldom consider them as correct, relevant, substantial, essential, necessary, or ultimately true.

Words are words just as things are things.

These papers and digital text files tell us a lot about how the working memory areas in our brain function, they tell us how the words in our brain, which are in fact link lists pointing to acoustic, visual, emotional, episodic memories and to other related (associated) words, are correlated, compared, taxed and weighted with or against other words and how the conclusions are made either according to logical rules (derived from grammatical rules) or via the magic of pattern recognition, represented and vaguely defined by the terms common sense, intuition, imagination, creativity, phantasy, vision.

Pattern recognition occurs usually outside the working memory areas and is therefore by definition subconscious because the working memory (also called central executive) is nothing else than our consciousness. Forget about qualia, sentience vs. sapience, mind vs. body dualism, and a few thousand years of philosophical bickering, consciousness is just the group of momentarily active link lists (represented by the markers which we call words) inside the working memory plus the signals from the sensory system, the amygdala, and other regions of the brain, which reach the working memory and are able to activate parts of it to start a process of correlating, weighing, amending, correcting, changing, and rearranging the link lists (aka the words).

Everybody can check the validity of the above mentioned assumption by remembering situations where a nasty headache or other chronic pain suddenly is not felt because her/his attention is caught by certain important sensory signals indicating impending danger which needs an urgent, instant response. Such signals will cause the working memory to shift focus and use all available capacities to react properly to the suddenly and unexpectedly emerged threat.

The chronic pain will be forgotten until the sudden threat is dealt with.

These rough and blunt statements, ending and making mute all discussions about consciousness, mind, soul, free will, etc., were not the reason for writing and publishing the text that you are reading now. I only mentioned this en passant to lay the groundwork for a universal assessment of all the in the fourth paragraph of the text mentioned political, social, economical, philosophical, and scientific essays, comments, discussions, and analysis.

After the sharp shooting introduction the reader probably will guess that I judge all this papers and digital text files with skepticism, leeriness, suspicion, sympathetic amusement, or (at utmost) critical appreciation.

Right.

What I forgot in the introduction: religious believers shouldn’t read this blog post. Please stop here, I   respect you, I care about you, I love you, peace!

Humans made a great step to understand the world around them when they introduced the principle of causality into their philosophical discourses. Causality is of course not compatible with religious and ideological superstitions, so John Locke, David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire, Diderot, and their contemporaries had to be careful not to attract the suspicion and ire of the religious establishment (an agency used by the ruling aristocrats and monarchs to keep the lower classes in check, an agency empowered to annihilate any new and potentially dangerous ideas plus the individuals which articulated such ideas).

The texts of the mentioned philosophers may be carefully worded, yet it is very clear from their content that all eminent thinkers of The Enlightenment left religious and ideological superstitions and their various respective iterations behind when they introduced the three main principles of “criticism, analogy, and causality.”

“There can be no truce between science and religion.” (John B. S. Haldane)

Causality was btw. the fundament on which the principles of evolution through natural selection, of classical (Newtonian) mechanics, of thermodynamics are based. None of these scientific theories would be possible and plausible without a firm belief in causality.

(Guess why religious conservatives in the USA fume about evolution and have introduced the theory of creationism? How little has changed — now like then religion is a most useful tool for the rulers to keep the masses in check.)

In the many decades since the enlightenment an understanding has evolved, that the principle of causality is not sufficient to define and comprehend the world, so causality was enhanced to multiple causality (or multiple causation). Philosophers introduced and promoted this amended form of causality under various names, the basis axiom (the basic idea) though was always the same and is easily to describe: Any result has multiple causes (factors), and one cause can lead to results in multiple areas.

This sounds pretty clever, but as it came out in the end, even the improved theory is a crude simplification and insufficient for understanding the world.

Well, lets try it again and expand the theory again: Causes are now called (considered to be) forces, movements, determinants, factors, vector, etc.

Depending on the chosen name (term), they can have amplitude, direction, mass, velocity (kinetic energy — motion), they can be particles or waves (quantum mechanics).

They are influencing each other, they are related and interconnected with each other, their number is infinite.

This sounds even more clever than multiple causation, the snag though is, that our working memory can only hold between 8 and 16 items (views about the correct number differ) in evidence at the same time which is awfully and sorely inadequate for dealing with problems and understanding situations where an infinite number of items are involved.

Thank goodness, that we have mathematics (probability theory, network theory, chaos theory, mathematical statistics) and powerful computers. Thank goodness, that we still have pattern recognition, where millions of synapses can be involved in a single process and ergo millions of items can be correlated in one go. Thank goodness, that we are equipped (or some of us are equipped, to be precise) with common sense, intuition, imagination, creativity, phantasy, and vision (acumen).

In many instances patter recognition in its various manifestations though may be still a crude and inert tool to even partly and approximately understand a problem or comprehend a situation.

Who claims to completely understand quantum mechanics?

I wrote at the start that words are words just as things are things. If it sounds like a word, looks like a word, smells like a word (just joking, words normally smell of nothing), it must be a word and it should not be misunderstood or confused with anything else.

Words can be ambiguous and vague, they can detract and mislead, can conceal and deceive, they can be euphemisms, metaphors, metonyms, they can have multiple meanings (polysemy), and they can have different meanings for different people.

That is the reason why the languages of mathematics and music use signs instead of or in addition to words. The signs in music and even more in mathematics are clearly defined, universal, and not prone to misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and reinterpretation.

Laws are word based and for that reason the essence, implication, and intent of a law is often disputed and armies of lawyers try to stretch the meaning of a legal text and squeeze out an interpretation that is favorable to their clients.

Twisting and turning words has been the preferred sport of warlords, politicians, clergymen, industrialists, ideologists, self declared prophets, and other charlatans, pied pipers, con artists throughout human history. We humans fell for them many times because of their powerful language, their skillful use, abuse, and misuse of words!

So: you have the words dignity, honor, destiny, legality (rightfulness),morality, justice, reality, and truth (or even “absolute”, “naked”, and “ultimate” truth). You have the words blessed, sacred, spirit, soul, heart,mind, qualia, god (or gods), devil (or devils), angels, saints, fairies, nymphs,satyrs, gnomes, demons, ghosts, you have heaven, hell, and reincarnation orafterlife.

The meaning of all these words is subject to countless variations, mutations, transformations, modifications, conversions, permutations, and whatever else. What one makes of the listed words and what weight, importance, and relevance one attributes to them is everyone’s personal business.

Because of this fact it is evident and probably not widely disputed that none of the many belief systems is universally accepted and that beliefs vary greatly.

So: If the listed words mean different things to different people, how can they ever be universal, absolute, definitive, true? How can beliefs be universal, absolute, true, when people believe in so many different things and their beliefs are not too seldom completely contradictory?

People believe in god (or gods), in exorcism, in creationism, human exceptionalism, in divine rights, in The Rapture and The Second Coming, in the reinstatement of the caliphate, 72 houris, and eternal erection. Some people believe in free trade, free markets and stock markets, quantitative easing, fiat money or the gold standard, and eternal growth of the economy. People believe in the inevitability of a proletarian revolution (sigh). A significant portion of the global population believe in knocking or spitting three times onto or into something, others believe in government statements and reports, in statistics, and in the evening news.

The great George Carlin would have known how to name that all properly but it is my immutable policy not to use derogatory terms in writings, therefore I observe now a moment of silence …. …. …. ….

The valued reader may fill the empty space with terms of her/his choosing.

Do I myself believe in anything what I write, do I consider my elaborations as the ultimate wisdom, do I take the results of my pondering deadly serious, are my statements definitive and final?

Of course not! This text here and all similar texts are exercises in composing and formulating, they are often not more than joyfully playing with words, and they most times just make fun of the experts and specialists, of all the knowledgable, competent, bright, distinguished, illustrious personalities.

Did I write this blog post to display intellectual bravado? Maybe, but if it helps to expose the intellectual bravado of others, it should be okay (meaning tolerable). If the reader examines the various blog posts carefully it will become clear that my writings always make fun of myself. Antidote to arrogance, audacity, egotism, vanity.

As the followers of my blog since the post A short guide for non-believersknow, the only things in which I temporarily (meaning: just for now until something better comes the way) believe are empathy and the scientific method.

Thats it, I hope you enjoyed the text!

P.S.:

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of my great idols, said the same so much better and more pointed than I could ever do it: “… philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.”

And if one reads Jacques Derrida carefully, one will find that his deconstructionism isn’t so far apart from Wittgenstein’s views. Derrida makes fun of his critics and his followers at the same time, playing masterfully with words and thereby exposing the fundamental functioning of our working memory.

Of course one could dispute this particular assessment and discuss the philosophical work of Wittgenstein and Derrida exhaustingly for a nearly infinite number of useless days and sleepless nights.

Unsorted thoughts

I went out in the morning at 6 AM and killed 200 slugs with scissors. I’m a passionate mass murderer, since the slugs last spring ruined many of the pumpkin and chard sprouts and did eat a good part of the strawberry fruits.

I want to eat the strawberry fruits by myself, I’m not gardening for the slugs and snails, for the mice and birds, I’m gardening to produce my own food, to become self reliant, to avoid the unhealthy, artificial products of the food industry.

The slugs are often tiny and not more than one centimeter long, but they grow fast and they have an insatiable appetite. Slugs like to travel in company. When I have detected one, I carefully search the surrounding area and most times find a few other ones nearby.

They are light brown or dark brown or black. They can be short or long, small or big. I have learned to recognize them whatever color, size, or shape they have, I know their places and migration routes, and I know their behavior. I walk across the meadow and look around the strawberry beds, vegetable beds, and hedges to find and cut them. One killed slug here and there will not make a difference, but I kill a lot, one every two seconds, sometimes one every single second. A thousand killed slugs per week make a difference.

Slugs love to cannibalize their dead fellow slugs. When I’ve finished my round I quickly check again the places where I was successful, to eliminate the ones that are just gorging on their dead relatives.

Cutting slugs with scissors may seem utterly disgusting to the reader. I find it disgusting too — but somebody has to do the job.

The main strawberry beds are fenced off with stripes of 20 centimeter high aluminum wire mesh. Small slugs can overcome this barrier (don’t ask me how) but if the bed finally is cleared from slugs (with bear cups, slug bait, and scissors) there will be seldom an intruder and the damage will be negligible. The aluminum mesh barriers also significantly impede the migration of the slugs.

In addition to the described methods I disperse iron based phosphate slug pellets in strategic places and I use an old trick which a fellow blogger last year told me: About 20 small cups filled with beer are buried in the ground to attract the slugs. They fall in and drown there. This is also a clever method to gauge the severity of the slug infestation.The first few days after I started my war against slugs all the cups were full of dead slug bodies (meaning another 200 eliminated slugs). Now there are only one or two in, I’ve indeed nearly extinguished them.

Is drowning slugs in beer more humane than cutting them in pieces? I don’t want to discuss the consciousness of slugs and their ability to feel pain extensively here. They die instantly when I cut them, so at least they don’t suffer for more than a moment. Their neural system isn’t highly developed and their bodies responses to injuries are probably not resembling anything close to the pain signals that reach the human brain in case of severe injuries or sicknesses.

Since I started gardening, my whole ethical framework has been uprooted and all values turned upside down. I always despised carnivores and sympathized with herbivores, I’m a vegetarian myself. Now I hunt the slugs and snails, and the resident hedgehogs and toads are my friends. The spiders have become my friends too, while the woodlice, plant lice, and many beetles have become my foes.

Empathy is always selective and limited, ethical frameworks and moral rules are not absolute but based on practicality and on the urge to thrive and survive. Beware of the hypocrites and the self-righteous religious fanatics. True believers in what?

Slugs are the bane of the garden, but their relatives, the snails, are not a big problem here — the hedgehog takes care of them. Every time when I find a cracked open empty snail house I say “thank you, my dear hedgehog.” Snails are also easier to detect than slugs — it would have advantages to travel light, but that’s not in their genes.

I just wonder, if the slugs over time will evolve and by mutation and natural selection a new bread of super slugs will develop. In Florida “giant African land snails” have emerged, they can grow to the size of rats and they cause quite some trouble there.

Super slugs, bigger, faster, and more clever, could become a life threatening problem. They would destroy all food crops, they would destroy every plant and leave just barren land. But they would also reach their limits one day, set by topography, climate, and predators (ducks, hedgehogs, some bird species, slow worms, toads). Bacterial diseases and parasites would decimate them too.

Are we the “super slugs”?

I was so excited when a toad last spring laid her spawn into the garden pond. The tadpoles are cute and funny, I watched them often for a few minutes. The pond unfortunately is inhabited by dragonfly nymphs, which are terrible predators who have wiped out nearly every other species in the pond.

People like the dragonfly nymphs because they keep the water clean of mosquito larvae. I prefer backswimmer, which would do the same job but not exterminate all other life. Backswimmers don’t feed on water beetles and tiny freshwater snails which keep the pond clean from algae.

The dragonflies thrive because the forest is their natural hunting ground and the nearby ponds are ideal breading places. When I built the pond, I put a ton of stones into it because I thought the gaps between the stones would be ideal hiding places for all species. Unfortunately the dragonfly nymphs make the best out of this special characteristic of the pond. If there would be more sludge and less stones, other insects like the backswimmers could bury themselves in the ground and escape the onslaught by the dragonfly nymphs.

Anytime humans try to control nature, there can be unintended consequences.

I intend to put a large portion of the stones out of the water and pile them up to a little wall along one of the hedges to create an additional refuge for lizards and toads. But that is a project which would occupy me for a few days and it is not a priority right now.

Last summer I was sad to see the tadpoles become less and less and I was doubtful that any of them would survive. But in fall I heard occasionally a soft croak, croak and I became more and more confident that at least one of them had made it.

One morning in March I finally caught the little toad youngster by surprise while it was sitting in the pond. The toad was small and dark grey, not orange/ocher colored like its mother. A few days later I surprised two in the pond; a couple! I thought, and I got even more excited when I discovered spawn strings in one corner of the pond.

But the spawn didn’t develop into tadpoles and the croak, croak, which was a familiar sound in the garden for a few weeks suddenly stopped.

A few days after the toad calls had stopped, at the start of April, I watched one of the cats chasing a snake. A snake isn’t fast enough to escape a cat, but the meandering, waving, twisting movements of the snake puzzled the cat and when the snake reached the garden pond it disappeared without a trace inside the wall of twigs, thorny scrubs, and bushes, that I have installed around the pond to prevent the cats from fishing out and killing frogs and toads.

This was the first time I ever saw a snake in the garden, snakes have become rare and they are threatened with extinction like all reptiles and amphibians. I have found a few blind worms though. They like the garden and one even hibernated in a corner of the garage, as I discovered when I started spring cleaning.

The snake had two orange marks on the neck and a look into Wikipedia confirmed, that this was a grass snake (Natrix Natrix), though a small and obviously very young one. The grass snake is the most common European snake and almost invariably lives near water. My garden pond with the surrounding wall of twigs and scrubs was for sure an ideal place for the animal.

Grass snakes are not venomous and they are loners, so this individual will be most likely the only one here and it will be no threat to anybody except the toads. Grass snakes unfortunately nearly exclusively feed on toads and it was undoubtly a wise move of the toad couple to leave the pond for a safer place.

A few days ago, when I went into the garden for a last inspection late at night after having absolved the obligatory daily walk in the forest with the cat family I encountered one of the toads. It is still small and grey. The toad tried to escape and hopped towards the wall of the house where it crouched in a corner motionless, helpless, clueless. I took it softly with a paper tissue and it relaxed, it seemed to sense that there was no danger anymore.

I had the little animal in my hand and just tried to memorize this moment for life. Toads are not particularly cuddly but I like them and feel for them. They are my friends. I put the toad carefully into the most dense hedge where it instantly disappeared.

Snakes are a threatened species, toads are even more threatened, cats are not threatened at all. My sympathies are with the toads, followed by the cats. But my preferences don’t matter, nature will take its course and I am only the observer. Not uninvolved though because I have to take care, that the garden always, no matter how intensively it is cultivated, provides enough hiding places and a suitable habitat for all critters.

The reality of the garden, of the forest, of my associated cat family, tops the reality of the computer screen anytime.

Nevertheless, I turned on the computer again after being abstinent for a week, anxious to read the newest news and media lies, to sift through the deluge of disinformation, indoctrination, reeducation, propaganda. No, the CIA assassination squads still didn’t get Assad and the reports from Syria become more and more positive. 

Just for fun I looked at the blog statistics and found to my astonishment, that there are still between 40 and 60 people a day looking. I never expected to have that much traffic. It seems, that my tiny voice is heard by someone and maybe there is some apprehension or anticipation, so I feel compelled to publish another post. I didn’t write a text for two month, blogging is not that important for me.

Offloading a few ideas that recently ran through my head:

The prospect, that the imperial plans could be thwarted, the destabilization of one country after the other could be stopped, the evil axis of western neocolonial powers and Arab potentates could be beaten back, is exciting, gives hope, gives the peace- and anti-globalization movement a new life.

Does Dr. Bashar al-Assad realize, how admired he is, does he know that the hope of millions — if not billions — around the world rest on him, is he aware that he is the new idol, the new flag bearer of the anti-imperialism, anti-globalization movement?

Muammar Gaddafi and Hugo Chavez are dead, Fidel Castro Ruz has retired and become an elder statesman (an important voice though still), who else should take the lead?

Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, is an interesting multifaceted person, an intelligent man, but not inspiring and not trustworthy. I still ponder, why Russia and China sacrificed Gaddafi’s Libya. Why didn’t they impede the western conquest like they do now in Syria? Are Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov idiots? Was Libya simply not that important for them and didn’t they realize the implications? Or is the wickedness and vileness of western leaders and strategic planners simply beyond the comprehension of a normal, non-psychopathic person?

Sergei Lavrov is a chain smoker, but that shouldn’t completely disqualify him, MLK was a smoker too (and a womanizer/adulterer, just for the record).

Dr. Bashar al-Assad is most likely aware of his position and of the weight that is resting on his sholders, he is an intelligent, sensitive person, an eye doctor, who intended to have a quiet life treating and curing people, a man who reluctantly had to take the reign in Syria after the designated successor of then President Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s glamorous brother Bassel, crashed his Mercedes in 1994.

Dr. Bashar al-Assad did not seek out recognition or popularity. He had no interest in being in the middle of politics. In his school days he was perceived as a shy, reserved, hesitant child who did not inherit any of his father’s or brother’s intelligence and leadership. Many Syrians viewed Bashar as a nerd, not someone with the instincts or the drive to lead a country.

Commentators described him as “not a natural politician” (whatever that may mean) and as nothing more than a figurehead for the influential Ba’ath party establishment.

Dr. Bashar al-Assad is not without fail. His neoliberal economic policies and privatization programs in the early years of his presidency — driven by his admiration of western culture — exaggerated social inequality and were together with the permanent drought and the resultant mass migration main causes of the social unrest that US Ambassador Ford and helpers used to start the Syrian rebellion.

Yet Bashar’s performance in the crisis until now is brilliant. Contrary to western media claims of a bloody suppression he avoided violence against the protesters, the policemen guarding the protest marches initially were unarmed (this explains why the death toll of syrian security forces at the start of the crisis was exorbitantly high).

Later, when police carried weapons the officers had to account for every bullet and got strict order to avoid any confrontation. The restraint didn’t help, as the destabilization efforts went on relentlessly and mercilessly and the western media curtained off the truth behind a wall of lies, working in overdrive to demonize the Syrian government and especially Dr. Bashar al-Assad.

One can only hope, that Dr. al-Assad’s love affair with capitalism and western consumerism has ended now. He needed to install a war economy, which is by definition not free market oriented. He clearly is not patronized anymore by Ba’ath party elders and he initiated the installment of a new political structure which over time should end one party rule and lead to a system that most likely will resemble a federal republic.

The new established local militias and councils also ought to be a guaranty for decentralization and local autonomy. The Kurds for sure will be rewarded for their steadfast support by far reaching autonomy.

A few links:

Interesting, how the the SPIEGEL, Germany’s main political propaganda magazine, turns the corner:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/rebel-leaders-ask-for-weapons-from-the-west-a-901747.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,901188,00.html

The AL-Monitor is a US funded propaganda tool, but it often publishes translations of detailed reports from local Middle East news agencies and every now and then there are gems hidden between the propaganda trash.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/05/erdogan-turkey-washington-russia-syria-conflict.html
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/al-nusra-syria-jihadists-divisions.html

Our dependable, admired, battle hardened dissidents:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34989.htm
http://sjlendman.blogspot.co.at/2013/05/wall-street-journal-urges-war-on-syria.html

The following two pictures from the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado deeply touched me:

And I thought: US Americans cannot be that terrible, there are good people there!

There are good people and bad people there, like in every nation. Unfortunately the bad people are in the driver seat. Not surprisingly, because in a society which admires wealth, power, and military strengths, the ruthless criminals, the cold blooded sociopaths will elbow their way through the ranks up to the top and occupy all important positions.

They say, that US inhabitants are hurting and the infrastructure is crumbling. Bridges collapse, train rails break, public services are reduced or privatized. Social programs are cut, healthcare becomes unaffordable, schools are closed. If you have no savings, you are out of luck. But your savings and your pension have been stolen by the shenanigans of the stock market.

And still, why are poor US Americans able to get obese when their fellow humans in Africa and Asia are starving to death? Why do US Americans in average still use 8 to 9 times more energy and resources than the other 95,6 percent of humans? Why is the US auto industry still doing fairly well and even said to be recovering? Why are US based corporations like Wal-Mart, ExxonMobile, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Boing, Chevron, General Electric, etc. still the most profitable on earth?

Why is US oil exploration and mining still devastating nature and poisoning the biosphere in countless places around the world? Why are workers in overseas sweatshops still employed in slave like conditions, ruining their health and risking their lives while producing goods for the US consumer?

Why has the US electorate chosen presidents like Bush and Obama?

I once read, that US Americans spend an incredible 8 hours a day in front of TV or computer screens. I cannot prove the validity of this number, but everything what I read and hear indicates that this is not an exaggeration and that most US Americans in addition to this 8 hours stare the rest of their wake time at the screens of their smartphones.

No wonder that one is not able to make sensible choices when life is defined by the virtual reality of a TV, a computer, or a cellphone screen.

The screen-addiction of US Americans is a perfect tool to keep the lower classes sedated and quiet, it will be very hard if not impossible to change that. But the flame is still burning, and countless dissenters work clandestinely for change — real change. No need to go into details, I wrote about this issue many times before.

Monkeywrenching, and if that fails, mother nature will provide a solution by herself. Her moves will be overwhelming and decisive — it will not be pretty!

Shock and awe.

No, I’m not bitter, I’m not discouraged, disillusioned, desperate. Nor am I tired, or exhausted, or willing to give up or give in or be quiet.

Life is suffering (the four noble truth), evidently, but life is too interesting to quit. One can turn the wilderness into a beautiful garden. And if that is not possible one can still cultivate the garden inside. Watching, learning, making music, spending time with loved ones, walking in the forest.

Being kind, tender, sensitive, understanding.

An open heart and a creative mind. Growing love and giving love to everyone who comes the way and who is willing to receive it.

Writing blog posts like this one.

Epilog

Sifting through about 400 emails the story of Brigitta, the wheelchair cat, caught my eyes and touched me. Somebody shot at Brigitta with an air gun and the pellet lodged in her spine, paralyzing her hind legs. This was in Bulgaria, but Angela Heuer, a German woman who runs a private animal sanctuary and a charity for stray cats in Celle, transferred Brigitta to Germany to let the projectile remove (at the cost of 1,300 US$ — one must be indeed a dedicated animal lover to spend that amount of money!). Brigitta got a “cat-wheelchair” and has even found a new life purpose by adopting two tiny abandoned kittens. She can’t feed them, but she nuzzles and licks them affectionately and guards them like any other cat mother would do.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/wheelchair-bound-cat-in-germany-adopts-abandoned-kittens-a-900002.html
http://www.angieandfriends-streunerhilfe.de/verein.htm

When I read this story, I thought: Humans cannot be that terrible, there are good people on this planet!

There are good people and bad people on this planet, like on every other earthlike planet in the universe. Unfortunately the bad people are in the driver seat. Not surprisingly, because in a world which admires wealth, power, and military strengths, the ruthless criminals, the cold blooded sociopaths will elbow their way through the ranks up to the top and occupy all important positions.

The reader is invited to continue the story at her or his own liking.